Birth of a New School

The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful), the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit's foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit's foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.

Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk

into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and work up onto the high ground and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake. A pencil-lead might break off in the conical nose of the pencil sharpener and you would use the small blade of the penknife to clear it or else sharpen the pencil carefully with the sharp blade and then slip your arm through the sweat-salted leather of your pack strap to lift the pack again, get the other arm through and feel the weight settle on your back and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake.

Then you would hear someone say, 'Hi, Hem. What are you trying to do? Write in a

cafe?'

Your luck had run out and you shut the notebook. This was the worst thing that could happen. If you could keep your temper it would be better but I was not good at keeping mine then and said, 'You rotten son of a bitch, what are you doing in here off your filthy beat?'

'Don't be insulting just because you want to act like an eccentric.'

'Take your dirty camping mouth out of here.' 'It's a public cafe. I've just as much right here as you have.' 'Why don't you go up to the Petite Chaumiere where you belong?'

'Oh dear. Don't be so tiresome.'

Now you could get out and hope it was an accidental visit and that the visitor had only come in by chance and there was not going to be an infestation. There were other good cafes to work in but they were a long walk away and this was my home cafe. It was bad to be driven out of the Closerie des Lilas. I had to make a stand or move. It was probably wiser to move but the anger started to come and I said, 'Listen. A bitch like you has plenty of places to go. Why do you have to come here and louse a decent cafe?'

'I just came in to have a drink. What's wrong with that?'

'At home they'd serve you and then break the glass.'

'Where's home? It sounds like a charming place.'

He was sitting at the next table, a tall fat young man with spectacles. He had ordered a beer. I thought I would ignore him and see if I could write. So I ignored him and wrote two sentences.

'All I did was speak to you.'

I went on and wrote another sentence. It dies hard when it is really going and you are into it.

'I suppose you've got so great nobody can speak to you.'

I wrote another sentence that ended the paragraph and read it over. It was still all right and I wrote the first sentence of the next paragraph.

'You never think about anyone else or that they may have problems too.'

I had heard complaining all my life. I found I could go on writing and that it was no worse than other noises, certainly better than Ezra learning to play the bassoon.

'Suppose you wanted to be a writer and felt it in every part of your body and it just wouldn't come.'

I went on writing and I was beginning to have luck now as well as the other thing.

'Suppose once it had come like an irresistible torrent and then it left you mute and silent.'

Better than mute and noisy, I thought, and went on writing. He was in full cry now and the unbelievable sentences were soothing as the noise of a plank being violated in the sawmill.

'We went to Greece,' I heard him say later. I had not heard him for some time except as noise. I was ahead now and I could leave it and go on tomorrow.

'You say you used it or you went there?'

'Don't be vulgar,' he said. 'Don't you want me to tell you the rest?'

'No,' I said. I closed the notebook and put it in my pocket.

'Don't you care how it came out?'

'No.'

'Don't you care about life and the suffering of a fellow human being?'

'Not you.'

'You're beastly.'

'Yes.'

'I thought you could help me, Hem.'

'I'd be glad to shoot you.'

'Would you?'

'No. There's a law against it.'

'I'd do anything for you.'

"Would you?'

'Of course I would.'

'Then keep the hell away from this cafe. Start with that.'

I stood up and the waiter came over and I paid.

'Can I walk down to the sawmill with you, Hem?'

'No.'

'Well, I'll see you some other time.'

'Not here.'

'That's perfectly right,' he said. 'I promised.'

'What are you writing?' I made a mistake and asked.

'I'm writing the best I can. Just as you do. But it's so terribly difficult.'

'You shouldn't write if you can't write. What do you have to cry about it for? Go

home. Get a job. Hang yourself. Only don't talk about it. You could never write.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Did you ever hear yourself talk?'

'It's writing I'm talking about.'

"Then shut up.'

'You're just cruel,' he said. 'Everybody always said you were cruel and heartless and conceited. I always defended you. But not any more.'

'Good.'

'How can you be so cruel to a fellow human being?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'Look, if you can't write why don't you learn to write criticism?'

'Do you think I should?'

'It would be fine,' I told him. 'Then you can always write. You won't ever have to worry about it not coming nor being mute and silent. People will read it and respect it.'

'Do you think I could be a good critic?'

'I don't know how good. But you could be a critic. There will always be people who will help you and you can help your own people.'

'What do you mean, my own people?'

'The ones you go around with.'

'Oh them. They have their critics.'

'You don't have to criticize books,' I said. 'There's pictures, plays, ballet, the cinema

—'

'You make it sound fascinating, Hem. Thank you so much. It's so exciting. It's

creative too.'

'Creation's probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.'

'Of course there's nothing to prevent me doing creative writing too.'

'Not a thing. Except you may set yourself impossibly high standards by your

criticism.'

'They'll be high. You can count on that.'

'I'm sure they will be.'

He was a critic already, so I asked him if he would have a drink and he accepted.

'Hem,' he said, and I knew he was a critic now since, in conversation, they put your name at the beginning of a sentence rather than at the end, 'I have to tell you I find your work just a little too stark.'

'Too bad,' I said.

'Hem, it's too stripped, too lean.'

'Bad luck.'

'Hem, too stark, too stripped, too lean, too sinewy.'

I felt the rabbit's foot in my pocket guiltily. 'I'll try to fatten it up a little.'

'Mind, I don't want it obese.'

'Hal,' I said, practising speaking like a critic, 'I'll avoid that as long as I can.'

'Glad we see eye to eye,' he said manfully.

'You'll remember about not coming here when I'm working?'

'Naturally, Hem. Of course. I'll have my own cafe now.'

'You're very kind.'

'I try to be,' he said.

It would be interesting and instructive if the young man had turned out to be a

famous critic, but it did not turn out that way although I had high hopes for a while.

I did not think that he would come back the next day but I did not want to take

chances and I decided to give the Closerie a day's rest. So the next morning I woke early, boiled the rubber nipples and the bottles, made the formula, finished the bottling, gave Mr Bumby a bottle and worked on the dining-room table before anyone but he, F. Puss the cat, and I were awake. The two of them were quiet and good company and I worked better than I had ever done. In those days you did not really need anything, not even the rabbit's foot, but it was good to feel it in your pocket.

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